Terrence Malick directs Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko and Rachel McAdams in this arty-farty drama about love, faith, madness and soil.
If I went to see this at the cinema I wouldn’t have had the option to check my phone continually, pause it to go make a coffee and doze twice during it. Did it have my attention in any way? No. Not one little bit. Bored me senseless. Did it look beautiful? Yes, with a forced, vapid perfume advert kinda aesthetic. Did it have anything to say about its big themes? Not in a delivery system I could in any way, shape or form relate to. Olga Kurylenko puts in a surprising good shift as a gorgeous lost soul but even this is smothered by the trite and overly earnest house style.
Mark L Lester directs Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong and Vernon Wells in this violent actioner where Arnie must rescue his daughter from the mercenaries who want him to assassinate a president.
Exactly 90 minutes. The perfect length. Commando is filled with flowing carnage, smooth stunts, hissable villians, funny one-liners and juddering muscle. The plot is a streamlined marvel… ticking clock, relatable quest (“ALL I CARE ABOUT IS JENNY!”), join the dots action. James Horner’s score is persuasive and hectoring. You get Bill Duke, Dan Hedaya and David Patrick Kelly in side baddie roles. All are dispatched with mordant wit and teutonic cool. Arnie punches his way out of airplanes, shopping malls and motels like they are made of crepe paper. Who knows what is going on in that neighbouring hotel room when he crashes through its wall? Looks like they are filming a pegging video! While not the very best of its form, it does feel like the purest example, which makes it endlessly rewatchable. If you have a thrusting desire to see Arnie take down a toy catalogue of colourful henchmen one scene at a time and then cut through the entire Val Verde separatist army like butter then this is base metal such spears are forged from. If you don’t have 90 minutes but do have a spare 2 then the trailer is also the stuff of legend. “If it is a mission no man can survive… he’s the man for the job!” Yes! YES! Arnold was, is and always will be!
Yûzô Kawashima directs Michiyo Aratama, Tatsuya Mihashi and Yukiko Todoroki in this Japanese drama where an unemployed couple drift to the outskirts and temptations of a city’s prostitution area.
A really engaging, unjudgmental drama. You get a better idea of post-war Japan city life from this hard-edged soap. The best moments are when the characters are just going about their day serving sake or noodles and wandering the streets looking for each other. Unlike Ken Loach or The Dardennes, Kawashima doesn’t paint poverty as an impossible trap but does capture the desperation and pressure such limited options put on relationships and the soul. Earthy, solid.
Andrei Konchalovsky directs Jon Voight, Eric Roberts and Rebecca De Mornay in this prison break disaster movie where two dehumanised convicts hide from a manhunt on a train hurtling to its own destruction.
Harsh cold steel hurtling at you on celluloid. One of the most kinetic movies ever made. Based on an unmade Akira Kurosawa script and brushed up by ex-con and future Mr Blue Edward Bunker. This film is hard-as-nails. Both the early maximum security sequences and the unstoppable engine bulk absolutely pump. Both actors give unhinged, unrestrained performances as the brutes on the run and stuck on a road to oblivion. They were both Oscar nominated, which is a surprise, but not undeserved. This is a hyper sped up, snarling, down and dirty actioner. The existential poetry and more heartfelt character moments actually feel organic to the tough stuff. Essentially you come for the yard shivings, carriage crashes, even madder than the psychos mad warden dangling himself off helicopters and bogwashings but you stay for the surprisingly intelligent drama. An overlooked great.
John M. Stahl directs Claudette Colbert, Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington in this drama where a friendship between a widow and her black servant is put under strain when one of their daughters falls for the wrong man and the other tries to pass as white.
Some of the attitudes here would have be seen progressive at the time, they now look ham fistedly racist. But you can tell this is a film with its heart in the right place… and a great one to boot. Beavers and Colbert have wonderful chemistry and all the subplots fascinate. Sure a modern film would explore Fredi Washington’s complicated existence with more nuance and focus but this still manages to say a lot… even if it says it in the uncertain, insensitive voice of the 1930s. A truly brilliant melodrama.
Alfred Santell directs Michael O’Shea, Susan Hayward and Osa Massen in this adventure biopic of the socialist writer and journalist.
Jack London is a writer I love and was a man of action as well as letters. The first half of this is a romp as he tries various manly, risky trades. Then we descend into anti-Jap propaganda. Appropriate for the time but not for the subject.
Preston Sturges directs Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken and William Deramest in this screwball comedy where a sap marries his childhood sweetheart to cover up her drunken marriage to a forgotten shipping-out G.I..
High energy, risky content comedy. Absolutely hell for leather. There are nice running jokes and some cracking zingers. It possibly has dated more poorly when compared to The Lady Eve or The Palm Beach Story.
Jean Luc-Godard directs Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina and Graziella Galvani in this lovers on the run arthouse “classic”.
Is Jean Luc-Godard a great director? Or did he just cast the super hot Anna Karina often enough that people were distracted from how vapid and pretentious a lot of his output is? I’m tapping out from exploring him for an extended period. This is third film of his in a row that just bored me.
John Waters directs Divine, Mink Stole and Edith Massey in this bad taste classic where a trailer trash transvestite and a twisted couple compete to be “the filthiest person alive”.
No unsuspecting soul is going to watch Pink Flamingos by accident in the 21st century. It is never going to appear on Netflix, never be remade. We had to order the DVD in from the States. It is a dirty, unnerving, brash experience. A grandmother in her dishevelled underdress obsesses over eggs. Extras wear Nazi insignias. Nude women are kept chained in a derelict basement. Every line is delivered in screeching mania. It is all very silly. You get dragged into the pantomime horridness of it. The infamous scene where Divine eats a little dog turd won’t turn your stomach. The scene where her and her “son” revenge lick the surfaces of their rivals’ house for minutes on end might. They then engages in some very disenthused incestuous fellatio. The incest is play acting, the dick sucking is real. Constantly sleazy, constantly boundary pushing but, apart from existing to startle and amuse with tawdry consistency, does Pink Flamingos have a point? Maybe… all the extreme stunts and imagery normalises or puts into context the other elements, that while not part of mainstream society, are not anywhere nearly as immoral as viewed back then. Trans life, homosexuality, romance of the unattractive and disabled are presented on screen as matter of fact. When juxtaposed with chicken rapes and semen injections they become the norm. Maybe that’s the point… and maybe it is just a filthy shock freak show. Either way… it works. Waters presents his menagerie of transgressions with energy and blunt wit. If you chose to seek it out, take a walk on the antique wild side, Pink Flamingos is still very watchable and disgustingly funny.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 